What does “Bandwidth Limit Exceeded” Mean?

by Elaine on January 27, 2012

Oh, Ouch. I hate this error message. I got this “Bandwidth Limit Exceeded” error message a few times on my other website – CmsMind.com when I was web hosting at a limited bandwidth web hosting in the past.

1. What does Bandwidth mean?

First you must understand what Bandwidth means. Bandwidth is the monthly allowance of data transfers you are allowed by your web hosting provider. If your website is small and does not have that much traffic, web hosting companies sometimes will get away with giving you 200 MB of bandwidth, but as your website grows, more visitors will be hitting your page therefore using up more of your bandwidth. Once you exceed your maximum bandwidth limit that your web hosting allocates to you, your visitors will not see your website anymore, but will be greeted with an error message that says:

Error 509 : Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

2. How Can I Get Rid of this “Bandwidth Limit Exceeded” Message?

There is no way you can remove this message until the end of the month or billing cycle month. If the number of hits and traffic has been reached and exceeded, your web hosting will not allow more traffic through to view your website until the month ends. Rest assured that your website still exists and your files still exist, it’s just that your web hosting provider only allowed you x number of hits to your website. This message is not removable by you, it’s a message provided by the Webhosting provider.

3. Solution to “Bandwidth Limit Exceeded” Message

Ask your existing web hosting provider to increase your bandwidth limit. You might have to pay extra for this service.

Look into transferring your domain to a web hosting that provides unlimited bandwidth. That’s what I did. Some web hosting providers that give you unlimited bandwidth include: